Children of the Sun > Newsday

Moose News

(1/2) > >>

nacho:
A thread for amusing animal stories! Which will eventually morph into a discussion of the Rabies Apocalypse where RC and I argue about the fall of the Roman Empire and I marathon Stargate...



http://times-news.com/local/x1447686627/Deer-with-rabies-kicks-LaVale-woman-in-the-face


--- Quote ---Deer with rabies kicks LaVale woman in the face
Resident recovers from unusual exposure, attack

Michael A. Sawyers
Cumberland Times-News

LAVALE — The last thing Theresa Stevens expected to happen July 6 was to be kicked in the face by a deer, especially a deer that had rabies.

The Georges Creek Boulevard woman is part way through a series of post-exposure rabies shots that will continue weekly into early August.

Stevens, whose home is directly behind Jolly Roger Discount Liquors, said she had let her Yorkie out of the house at 6 a.m. when she looked up and found herself nose to nose with a deer.

“It stood up on its back legs and hit me in the cheek with one hoof and on the shoulder with the other,” Stevens said.

Stevens pushed the deer away, grabbed her dog, and awakened her husband, Larry, telling him she had been attacked by a deer.

“He thought I was crazy,” she said.

When the Stevenses went back outside, the doe was lying beneath their Toyota Corolla.

“I got it a bucket of water and it stuck its head in it,” Stevens said. “Larry got some video of the deer under the car.”

Eventually, Jim Mullan of the Maryland Wildlife and Heritage Service was called to the scene.

“The deer was emaciated and appeared to have been injured, probably by a vehicle strike,” Mullan said. “It could have been that weakened condition that allowed the deer to become contacted by a rabid animal.”

The deer was euthanized and samples were taken to test for chronic wasting disease and rabies.

Rabies was confirmed July 9 via a laboratory test at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in Baltimore, Mullan said. The CWD results are awaited. CWD is a deer disease and is not known to affect humans.

A determination was made that Stevens, whose hands had small cuts upon them, was exposed to the rabies virus by touching the water in which the deer had placed its head and deposited saliva.

Stevens said she developed a bad headache and muscle pain seven days after the incident and began vaccinations that evening.

“I won’t be hospitable to any more wildlife,” Stevens said.

It is rare for a deer to contract rabies, according to George Timko, a biologist with the Maryland Wildlife & Heritage Service.

“The last case we confirmed in the state was in Frederick County three or four years ago,” Timko said Monday. The most likely source of the rabies would be a raccoon, he added.

The biologist said feeding deer, such as with corn, will attract raccoons as well, thus putting those two animals in proximity and increasing the chance that a rabid raccoon could infect a deer.
--- End quote ---

nacho:
Full article and great photo at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/moose-frozen-lake-norway_n_4568619.html


--- Quote ---Inger Sjøberg was ice skating on Kosmo lake in northern Norway recently when she came across something dark in the ice. A moose -- or an European elk -- was stuck in the frozen lake.

"I thought it was some wood or some grass or something, and when we looked at it, we saw that it was an elk," Sjøberg told Norway's The Local. "I have never seen it before, a frozen animal in the ice."

Sjøberg snapped a photo of the mammal, which has become the quite the attraction for locals.
--- End quote ---

nacho:

--- Quote ---A Bolt of Lightning Has Killed 323 Reindeer in Norway

A single lightning strike is believed to have killed more than 300 reindeer in Norway.

A total of 323 reindeer were found dead in the southern part of Norway on the Hardangervidda plateau, a press release from the Norwegian Environment Agency said. Among the 323 killed were 70 calves. An official from the Norwegian Nature Inspectorate discovered their carcasses during a routine inspection on Friday

Officials said they believe the herd of reindeer was killed by lightning strike as they huddled together during a heavy thunderstorm.

Of the 323 reindeer killed, five had to be euthanized because of their injuries.
--- End quote ---

And there are pictures!  http://time.com/4470432/lightning-strike-norway-reindeer/

nacho:
We haven't had Moose News in a while!

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/found-two-moose-frozen-together-in-a-final-battle


--- Quote ---In western Alaska, a man from Unalakleet came across these two unfortunate moose frozen into the river. Their antlers are locked together: they were fighting when they died.

Perhaps they drowned and were frozen later; perhaps they were so distracted by their battle that they didn’t notice to cold creeping up on them. Either way, when the river froze, they were still locked together.

“It appears that one of the brow tines (on the antler) penetrated and may have ended this (battle) fast, leaving the ‘winner’ with a 1000 lb headdress and probably pulled his head into the water where he drowned,” Jeff Erickson, who helped recover the moose, told Craig Medred, an independent journalist in Alaska.


--- End quote ---

nacho:
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/found-a-moose-in-this-random-persons-basement


--- Quote ---Out in Idaho and other parts of the American West, winter storms have dumped an unusual amount of snow all over the region. In some places, more than four feet of snow have accumulated, and collapsing buildings have become a real danger. The snow has also driven animals looking for food into towns, and over the weekend one unlucky moose accidentally stumbled into a basement in Hailey, Idaho.

The moose was not intending to sneak downstairs; he fell through a window well into the basement.

Senior Conservation Officer Alex Head, who has some experience getting moose out of homes, was called to the scene. As the Idaho Department of Fish and Game reports, he “attempted to herd to moose up the stairs and out the front door to freedom.”

However, the moose, which presumably had never been in a basement before, was freaked out and did not want to be herded. “The moose was having none of it, charging the officers several times,” the department reported. Head and colleagues decided their best choice was to sedate the moose.
--- End quote ---

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page